


The Hollow Men

by oxymoronassoc



Category: Battlestar Galactica (2003)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-18
Updated: 2017-06-18
Packaged: 2018-11-15 13:44:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,012
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11232228
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/oxymoronassoc/pseuds/oxymoronassoc
Summary: Spoilers for 220 "Lay Down Your Burdens Pt II". This was conceived between seasons. Originally written 4.17.06.The eyes are not hereThere are no eyes hereIn this valley of dying starsIn this hollow valleyThis broken jaw of our lost kingdomsIn this last of meeting placesWe grope togetherAnd avoid speechGathered on this beach of the tumid riverSightless, unlessThe eyes reappearAs the perpetual starMultifoliate roseOf death's twilight kingdomThe hope onlyOf empty men.- T.S. Eliot





	The Hollow Men

**Judgment**  
He hasn't seen her in over a year, and he begins to wonder if he didn't just make her up, if she wasn't some stress-related figment of his imagination, a coping mechanism. Brains are delicate things, he tells himself. Still, he takes the pill each morning and late at night when he can't sleep, he wonders if that's the only thing keeping him sane.

He's gotten everything he wanted and he still isn't happy. He feels cheated by the malaise that swamps his every action, so he drowns himself in cheap ambrosia and women. He is the President. He can do whatever he fracking likes.

Executive decisions bore him. Meetings bore him. Complaining people bore him in a manner bordering on irritating, like a rash that just keeps flaring up time and time again. Gaius wishes they would just shut up and leave him alone. He pops another pill, fracks another whore, drinks another bottle and they're still there.

His pills run low and he sends Felix to get more. He used to summon Cottle for refills, but the old man has gotten even more sour, if such a thing is possible, and one day he finally told Gaius there just weren't any left. A sort of panic had set in; he needs those pills, he needs to keep her away. How dare she have left him when he needed her? He has always been there for her, supporting her, and then she left him alone to wallow in his despair. He loved her and she left him, the cold hearted bitch. He says the pills are for depression, for the heavy burden of humanity that he must carry as president. Now he sends Felix directly to Pegasus. It's easier this way and no meddling old fool can deny him his salvation.

The first time he ventures out of his office, a flash of platinum hair in the crowd has his heart in his throat, but when the woman turns, he realizes she's the wrong shape, the wrong size, to be her. He makes sure to take an extra pill when he returns, but that night sleep just doesn't come and he wonders if it is truly possible to be crazy in love. Not, he reassures himself, that he is crazy. Love makes people do crazy things though, right? Gaius convinces himself this is true before falling into a fitful sleep full of platinum smirks and dirty blonde tears.

Six months go by in blessed oblivion and he grants an interview that ends in his bed. The press are the only people who love Gaius Baltar. That is, of course, besides Gaius Baltar himself. Sometimes he misses her whispering over his shoulder, but then he remembers what a bitch she could be. And that she wasn't real.

One morning he wakes up and wonders if Gina really loved him. He has a glass of ambrosia for breakfast and smokes an entire pack of cigarettes by noon.

Each day blurs into the next, a surreal landscape of mud and damp and booze. Felix has stopped commenting on the empty bottles and half-dressed women; he just gives Gaius disapproving looks when he thinks Gaius isn't watching. Gaius doesn't care. He's the president; he can do whatever he wants.

He remembers one day, as he listens to the rain pounding down on the ship, that this is supposed to be a brave new world and he laughs at the thought as he watches the smoke curl towards the ceiling. The prostitutes are giving him inquiring looks as to what is so funny, but he just shakes his head and lights a new cigarette.

By month nine, he's bored with everything so he makes executive decrees for something to do. He misses his experiments, misses having a direction. He feels a boiling, churning resentment in his stomach that his talents are being wasted on this godsforsaken rock for these thankless people. He signs six laws he doesn't care about one way or the other. The irony of the number does not escape him. 

He takes to sleeping in later and later and the hangovers never quite seem to dissipate before he's starting in on a new one. Gaius Baltar has never been so bored in his life. He is so bored he even attempts at conversing with his women, who, as always, have nothing to say. He's come to miss the inane talk shows and insipid reporters of Caprica past because at least they were schooled in not looking bored when he talked about himself. He misses martinis and endless invites to parties and everyone loving him and most of all he misses her.

It's another bleak, boring day on New Caprica and he's contemplating an after lunch frack when Felix bursts in without knocking, as usual. He's muttering something about cylons and the fleet and Gaius can't hear him as he watches the glasses rattle on the table. This can't be happening. He is the president. Things like this do not happen to Gaius Baltar, he thinks, but then he realizes that they do ever since he met her. Why is it, he wonders, that when things go rotten, they go rotten so well? The port windows are grey streaked with black as raider after raider fills the sky and he mouths "no" and then she speaks.

"Judgment day." 

He turns and there she is, sitting in his chair like she owns it, like she never left. A thick burning rises in his throat as he stares and he smirks. The sound of raiders scream in his ears and that's when he knows it's over.

* * *

**Position**  
Tigh awakens and Ellen isn't there beside him. It's rare she is; his wife is a busy woman. He shakes his head, throwing back the blankets and the cold air hits him like a punch in the gut. He'll never get used to it. 

He forgets to put on his boots and socks before getting out of bed and steps off the tattered rug beside the bed and into a nice clammy spot of mud. Grimacing and cursing, he picks his shirt up from where he's hung it neatly over the back of a wobbly-legged chair. It's dark grey and one arm is longer than the other. Tigh gives it a steely eyed glare, the kind that would make any nugget tremble in his boots and look away, but the shirt doesn't shape up and he puts it on with a sigh. 

His thick jacket is an uncomfortable weight and fits with none of the pomp and circumstance of his well-cut officer's jackets. He can see them, neatly lined up in his closet on Galactica until he remembers that Ellen packed them away in a box that's under their bed now. Their cold, empty bed. Not that he cares; the damn woman would just be harping about something. She always is.

There's a general planning meeting in three minutes and he pauses by the door, staring at the dog tags sitting next to the empty cut glass tumbler. The old brushed metal flask weights heavily in his jacket pocket and he gives in with a shake of his head, pulling the dog tags over his neck and tucking them under his knitted long johns before taking a long, deep pull at the flask. Frack the cup. 

It's drizzling when he steps outside and he glares at the sky, thinking he'd never have to put up with this crap on Galactica.

* * *

**Guilt**  
The quorum is putting pressure on the president and the union's threatening a protest and the day is cold and damp and it's all his fault. All he'd ever wanted to be was an officer on a Battlestar and look at him now, lackey to the idiot king. He remembers when he first met Gaius Baltar, genius of the Twelve Colonies, how terribly impressed he'd been, but he's come to realize that being a genius is horribly overrated. These days, he'd take competent but average any day. 

The paperwork is piling up in his tiny closet of an office. Gaius, of course, can't be bothered to read and sign all these papers; that's Felix's job. This isn't what I signed up for, he thinks as he sorts out form after form, but then he remembers this is all his fault and it gives him a lingering stomachache. He's not sure how he feels about being the downfall of humanity besides horribly guilty.

It isn't supposed to be like this; he'd just been doing his job. Sometimes he wishes he had known how it was going to play out and he'd kept his damn mouth shut. Part of him says he couldn't have lived with the "what if", but another part says "well at least you wouldn't have brought about the destruction of the human race". He's afraid both parts are right. Damned if you do, damned if you don't. 

Gaius is sprawled drunkenly on the couch, head pillowed by womanly thighs, a cigarette dangling from his fingers. Ash is dribbling onto the carpet and Felix pretends not to notice. It takes three sharp calls to rouse the man, this illustrious leader of the new world, and even then bloodshot eyes stare at him with thinly veiled annoyance. Felix hands him the paperwork wordlessly and Gaius stares at him like he doesn't know what to do with them. 

"You need to sign these. Today." 

The sigh is loud and put-upon and Felix wishes not for the first time that Gaius would sober and shape up. The president is supposed to be a leader, a role model; Felix hadn't wanted to be an officer just for the good pay. He'd wanted to lead, to help the colonies he lived in and the people who depended on the fleet. Gaius knocks a half-empty glass of ambrosia onto the floor as he fumbles for a pen and all Felix can do is stare in disgust. This is all his fault.

* * *

**Teaching**  
On her first day of school, Laura enters her classroom (and she always thinks of it as a room, not some old battered pavilion tent) with her arms crossed, both against the cold and the vague feeling that she's forgotten something important. Her eyes roam the dark canvas walls, taking in the desks and chairs, the neatly stacked but worn text books on her desk in the front. She walks slowly up the aisle, rubbing her upper arms unconsciously.

There's a packet on her desk, a slim thin-papered cardboard box of chalk. She picks it up and opens the tab, looking at the pristine white sticks before she reads the note with them. "Thought you might need these. Good luck." The note isn't signed, but she knows who it's from and smiles as she looks at the chalk this time, tapping a stick out with a practiced ease. She pauses, thinking for a moment before she writes her name on the blackboard in large swooping letters: Ms. Laura. 

She hears the children before she sees them, their high pitched voices chattering loudly in excited tones. Laura's always loved the first day of school and as she starts the day's lesson, she realizes she'd forgotten how much she loves to teach. The children's eyes light up as she speaks to them and they sit with the slack-jawed attention of the first day, hanging onto her every word. 

As with everything, the good days come with the bad, but even so Laura is constantly impressed by the adaptability of children. They go through their lessons like they were any other children, bicker like any other children, roll around in the mud like any other children. She watches them with an eagle eye for signs of their turbulent lives taking a toll, but they giggle and laugh and smile and fight with the same tenacity as ever.

She makes a conscious effort to avoid politics, to avoid influencing others with her past life. What's in the past is in the past, she thinks to herself, content to teach her class and take care of Isis, to mind her own business, but some days are harder than others with that idiot in power. She worries late at night, sitting by the smoldering brazier in her tent and staring out at the dark night, worries that the humanity she tried so hard to save is falling apart around her and there's nothing she can do. Bill might be able to leave them to the bed they made and let them lay in it, but Laura finds it harder and harder to stay away. There are people loyal to her still. All she has to do is say the word, but she doesn't.

Teaching one room of multiple grades reminds her of her youth, of old beloved novels now only charred remains on Caprica. Maya thinks it rather barbarically old fashioned, but Laura finds her small class to be a blessing after years of overcrowded classrooms and state curriculums. She is the state now, almost more than she was as president, because she is the one responsible for the education of the future of the human race. Her, and no one else. The thought almost makes her smile. Let Gaius Baltar try and ruin humanity; she will rebuild.

* * *

**Formality**  
Anastasia pauses on her way out of her new quarters and looks herself square in the mirror, hands already slicking her hair back into a tight ponytail. Petty Officer Dualla stares back and that just won't do. She thinks of Cain, harsh and commanding and strong. Anastasia might not agree with the other woman's actions, but she couldn't deny the commanding presence of well-pressed blues and bone straight hair with not a lock out of place. Then there's Kara Thrace, impulsive and daring and utterly reckless with her hair bound tight except at the nape and uniform rumpled, her devil-may-care attitude reflected in her entire appearance. Wide green eyes consider the woman in the mirror; her blues are new and crisp and she lowers her hands, letting her hair settle down around her face. Anastasia smoothes her dark hair straight with a brush and looks at herself again and smiles. This is how a fleet officer should look.

* * *

**Waiting**  
"How many licks does it take to get to the centre of a tootsie pop?" Helo stares at Duck across the hand of cards, swallowing a mouthful of sour apple flavoured spit. Kara glares and tells Duck to shut up, but Helo shakes his head and smiles, removing the lollypop from his mouth—the kind with gum, so it isn't even a tootsie pop at all—and calmly tells the idiot: "Four hundred and seventy-eight".

463, 464, 465. He leans against the reinforced glass wall, phone to his ear, waiting. 466, 467, 468, 469. Sharon keeps her back to him, curled up on her cot. 470, 471, 472. The candy rattles against his teeth, sliding over his tongue. 473, 474, 475. A rough chip in the sour apple lollypop snags and nicks his mouth, and Sharon still won't look at him. 476, 477, 478. He crunches down, teeth breaking through the hard candy and sticking into the gum as the phone is set gently back into its cradle.

Sometimes Helo dreams about leaving Galactica and going down to New Caprica. Sharon is with him and they're smiling and she's happy. He places a hand on her swollen belly and they kiss but her mouth is suddenly hard and cold and Karl opens his eyes from the kiss in horror and sees a machine. He wakes with a start, bashing his head on the shelf above his bunk, and tries to go back to sleep, but the same nightmare keeps plaguing him until the com sounds for am wakeup. 

He finds himself drifting away from the other pilots, not that they were ever close after he returned from Caprica. Instead, he waits for Sharon and whiles away the long, sleepless nights in the gym, exhausting himself into a dreamless sleep. Kara joins him one night, around the two month mark, and he waits for her to talk. It takes five hundred sit ups before she finally blurts out the necessary personnel order means Sam has to go. Helo nods and wonders what they'll do with Sharon. 

146, 147, 148. He and Sharon walk side by side down Galactica's empty corridors. 149, 150, 151. After four months, the old man decides that Sharon be allowed her own quarters and daily outings; a modified sort of house arrest now that there's so few left to care. 152, 153, 154. Helo comes to escort her each day at 1400 hours, but she doesn't seem to notice. 155, 156, 157. She looks through him, says nothing, emotionlessly lets him touch her hand. 158, 159, 160. He's run out of things to say, so he waits, sucking on a lollypop; waits for the day when she realizes she's more than a machine and he is more than just her enemy.

He wakes up one morning to the sound of the com ringing and stumbles out of bed and across the tiny closet sized room that came with his promotion. The lights are off and he knocks the box of lollypops off his desk. He hears them clatter to the floor and off into the dark as he fumbles for the phone and puts it to his ear. "Agathon here." The voice on the other end speaks and he can hear himself breathing too loudly. His hand is suddenly sweaty on the phone and when he steps back, a lollypop becomes embedded into his instep. Sharon is gone.

Strictly speaking, the food and drink aren't permitted in the CIC. Helo keeps waiting for the glare to come as he rattles the sucker against his teeth and scans the murky dradis, but the Old Man never says anything. Helo never sees him shake his head slightly and smile as Karl unwraps his daily lollypop at 1400 hours.

11, 12, 13. The mess is eerily silent; eleven months into the occupation and there's too few of them left. His synthesized mashed potatoes sit on the tray, untouched, smothered in fake gravy and canned peas. Kara hated canned, genetically modified peas, he remembers. 20, 21, 22. Karl sighs and repacks his battered cardboard box gently. He also remembers that Sharon—the other Sharon, not _his_ Sharon—had given him the box of sour apple suckers as a gift when she'd returned from leave. He'd figured they were a lost cause when he'd stayed behind, but there they'd been on his bunk the day he returned. 29, 30, 31. He counts the last lollypop into the box and picks it up, making it back to the CIC just as the com rings; it's Kara.

He dreams of Sharon again and it feels so real that he awakens and expects to see her there, waiting for him. Instead the com is ringing and the voice on the other end requests his attendance in the Admiral's office. He realizes then that he's overslept and hurries down the corridors, still buttoning his jacket. 

When lunch rolls around, he still can't believe the Old Man promoted him again. He babbles inanely about an old pyramid game and Adama nods and comments appropriately and Helo waits for Kara to call, to break the empty silence of the command deck. The com finally rings and he yanks it out of the cradle. "Galactica." A man speaks and it takes him a moment to realize it isn't Kara at all—the furthest from it. His heart slams up into his throat at the word "cylons" and even as they jump away, all he can think about is Sharon.

* * *

**Communication**  
The corridors of Galactica don't seem any different on the first day of the new era. They pass in a blur of the same muted greys, her feet slap the deck in the same rhythm, and the Old Man asks her what she hears. Nothing but the rain. Boom boom boom.

Sam never gets up early enough to run with her, so she runs alone. Sometimes she misses Lee, even though he was always insufferably cheerful in the mornings, carrying on at the top of his lungs until she wanted to make him eat her boot. She wonders if he still runs, if he thinks of her as he jogs new corridors and passes new faces. 

Kara never gives much thought to New Caprica, busy with her duties as CAG. It interferes little with her daily routine and the few numbers she loses make little impact upon the board. She lives and breathes Vipers by day and Samuel by night and Kara can't remember a time when she was happier.

The necessary personnel only declaration in month two is bothersome, but she figures she'll manage with tighter CAPs and longer hours. Her place is secure on Galactica and it never crosses her mind that Sam is not a necessary personnel because he is, for her. Adama calls her into his office one morning to explain with a sigh and all the begging and pleading can't persuade him to sign Samuel on. The most the Old Man can give her is to the end of the month. She thanks him and the look in his eyes is sad as she leaves.

She and Anders have their first real fight. He wants her to go with him to New Caprica. The idea terrifies her and they sleep in separate bunks; there are plenty to go around these days. 

The three month mark approaches and Kara still doesn't know what to do. The choice weighs heavily upon her mind, causing restless dreams and distracted CAPs. She talks it over with Helo, tries to force him into leading her to the right option, but he sees through her. "There is no wrong or right choice," he tells her quietly as he hands her the towel one afternoon at the gym. "Besides, you've already made up your mind."

Her feet seem too loud the next morning as she runs her familiar path. She feels lost and tired, so very tired of running. She passes the Old Man and when he asks her what she hears, for the first time Kara hears nothing. She comes to a stop in front of him, mid-step and the movement jars her knee painfully. 

"I'm going to leave with Sam," she tells him.

He nods like he's been expecting this, tucks a lock of her damp hair behind one ear, and gives her an intent stare. "You'll do fine," he tells her. Kara tries to believe him; she doesn't hear the rain anymore. 

That afternoon, she takes the shuttle to Pegasus and tells Lee. She feels like she owes it to him, for all his years of friendship, of camaraderie, of loving her. He goes into a rage and puts to voice every fear she has been too afraid to confront: what is life without Starbuck going to be for Kara Thrace? Will she survive and flourish as Kara or wither and dry up, nothing without Starbuck? Kara thinks of Tigh then and shudders. She tells him he's just scared that he's turning into his father and they scream at each other for another ten minutes at least before she can't take it any more and leaves. He yells at her back but she doesn't turn around, just keeps walking, eyes straight ahead and blinking hard. She isn't going to cry over Lee Adama and their broken friendship. She doesn't care, she doesn't care, she doesn't care. She tells herself this over and over again, hoping if she says it enough it might become true. 

She packs up her things when she returns to Galactica, sorting out her things into two piles: keep and get rid of. Most items she tosses easily into one box or another, but at the back of her locker, wrapped in her father's battered old jacket, she finds the blue dress. Kara checks the room to make sure no one is watching as she unfolds the silky fabric, stares at the wrinkled garment. She bites her lip, rubs her index finger over the ring on her thumb, and folds the dress back up, placing it at the bottom of her "keep" box, under her dress greys. The last thing she removes from her locker is the picture of her and Zak and Lee. Her fingers skim the slick paper, tracing the outlines of their bodies, before she puts the photo under the dress. 

The air on New Caprica smells sharp and damp and so very foreign from the recycled air aboard Galactica. They live in a tent, but Kara could care less because Sam is happy and she is happy for his happiness. She starts to get bored playing house by day five. A run-in with Tyrol in the marketplace lands her leading a group of ex-Specialists and civilian electricians in setting up new power grids and fixing generators. 

At the end of her first month on the planet, Kara marries and in a drunken fit they decide to forgo rings for matching tattoos. It hurts like a bitch the next morning and she wonders what exactly it was supposed to be—she thinks a phoenix rising or maybe pyramid baskets—but it's done and they're married and they're happy. 

It only takes her another month before Kara cooks her first truly eatable meal: soup. Sam slurps it down with no complaint and no grimace and she is pleased, even though she secretly knows he would eat cardboard if she told him it was food. 

An old service Raptor sits grounded out by the generators, to be used by important personnel for calls to the Battlestars. Kara uses the com to call up to Helo on particularly bad days; sometimes she gets the Old Man or even Tigh. Conversation is awkward at first, but her calls soon become regular reports, the weekly lunch call slipping easily into her routine.

Winter comes in month eight and Kara grows to hate the damp even more than she hates the mud. Mud, at least, you can wash off. Her knee grows stiff and aches; Sam rubs it for her sometimes at night, but she worries that she's losing the tone in her legs. The next morning she gets up a half hour early and runs for the first time in five months. 

She comes home one day around the second week of the tenth month with the sniffles. Sam makes her stay in bed for three days against her protests, babying her with crackers, backrubs, and soup. Kara is just sick enough not to complain that his soup tastes better than hers. He gets sick a week later and promises to stay in bed, but Kara comes home early from fixing a generator to find him out playing pyramid. She lets it slide because he gets better, but it's only temporary. He catches another cold and never tells her until she wakes up one night to the sound of him coughing. The sickness only moves further into his lungs and all the soup in the world isn't making him better. Kara feels helpless, but there's nothing she can do.

Heavy clouds hang dark over the little tent city and Kara returns home to find the bed empty once more. She hunts Sam down at the pyramid court and lectures him for the hundredth time and hopes that maybe this time he listens. He'd better listen; he can't die. She won't allow it. But he is and so she makes the call.

When Lee puts her on hold, Kara wants to kick herself for being foolish enough to think they could ever move on. She hangs up the com, shoves her hands deep into her pockets, and begins the trudge home. Her nose runs from the cold and she swipes at it with the back of her hand. There's a sudden scream in the sky and Kara turns, heart in her throat, to stare.

She wonders, later, if it's right to feel such a thrill up her spine, to have the adrenaline pumping through her body like this as they watch the Centurions march in. She looks at the faces around her and sees a similar eagerness in the old crewmembers. They have a purpose again. Tyrol calls her Captain and for the first time in months, she feels like one again. Kara shrugs Starbuck back on like a beloved old coat as she stares out at row after row of cylons. This is something she knows how to do. This is Kara Thrace. Kara and Starbuck are one and the same; she should never have thought otherwise.

When the first drop of rain spatters on her nose, she looks up at the sky and smiles.

* * *

**Depression**  
It's 0300 hours and he still can't sleep. He's tried everything, even hot milk—well, powdered milk that he heats up. It tastes like the dredges of a cereal bowl; Lee is surprised he remembers what that tastes like. He thinks about reading one of the old war tomes, neatly bound in new editions but eternally boring, that sit neatly on their shelves, waiting to be read. Lee lets them wait some more and instead opens a drawer in his desk and pulls out a thin battered book.

"What's in a name?" His eyes pause, ensnared, and the book drops from his fingers onto the desk top as he buries his face in his hands. Is he some kind of sick masochist for choosing this to read when that same question has been burning in his mind for months now? He shakes his head; he doesn't know. All he does know is that he's lost Apollo.

* * *

**Revenge**  
The first thing she thinks upon seeing her new quarters is that it would be so terribly easy to kill herself now. Shard of glass from a cup or mirror, bed sheet from a pipe in the ceiling, drowned in the sink, smothered with the bin liner. Her breath comes in slow, deep inhales as her eyes skim the room, store away ideas into her brain, a series of ones and zeros, each ending with her death.

She's come to realize the flaw though; no matter how many times she destroys her body, her mind will never be free to join that of her baby's. The tears come, hot and ugly, and she buries them in the scratchy cotton of the pillowcase, hugging it tight to her abdomen.

One afternoon, as she stares blankly past Helo's handsome face, she decides the only thing to do is to hurt them like they've hurt her. It's fierce and irrational and for the first time in months, Sharon feels alive. Her heart beats loudly in her ears and she smiles grimly as the possibilities begin to multiply in her mind. Alone, later, she sits cross-legged in the centre of her precisely military made bed, eyes closed, face serene as she plots the downfall of humanity.

Sometimes she lies on her back, staring at the ceiling, pillow hugged to her abdomen and wonders how she got here. This isn't God's will; there is no God. God is a joke, a disgusting, gut-churning joke. She imagines the other models when they realize there is no God and laughs softly. 

Sharon dreams of the baby, of Hera, tall and grown, running across a sunny lawn, laughing. She has her mother's almond shaped eyes, but the spattering of freckles across her nose is all Helo's. Hera spins in circles across the grass, hair swirling as she collapses onto the ground, still grinning. It's Helo's wide grin and somehow Sharon's shy smile at the same time. She jerks awake with a start, but all she can see are endless lines of ones and zeros against the dark of the room.

When he looks down at her with his sad eyes the next day, something snaps. She has to get away from these people, these insufferable humans with all their cruelties and failings and love. Love, she thinks bitterly, not hate is the harshest emotion of them all. She disappears quietly one afternoon; her marines later swear they turned the corner and she was just gone. 

She expects leaving to hurt, but instead she feels almost satisfied knowing she has wounded Helo and that by hurting him, she hurt the others. They're all too close on Galactica; no one can live and feel on their own. Part of her mind tells her this is family, but another screams for it to shut up, that family doesn't kill innocent babies.

She finds it easy enough to return to Caprica on a stolen Raptor, to slip into the ranks of Eight, to smile and nod and say "God loves us" and not mean any of it. They make her sick with their mindless devotion to a false idea; they're worse than humans in that respect. God is nothing.

Six and Eight—Caprica and Boomer—stand in front of the crowd and speak in passionate tones and the other models listen, but all Sharon can do is stare. She knows their history and she can't believe that they aren't as fracked up as she is. No one can escape the taint of humanity, not even a cylon. Error error error. Does not compute, a voice whispers in her ear and it sounds like Kara Thrace. Sharon looks around quickly and sees Leoben smiling at her, a gash across his cheekbone, weeping slightly, but he makes no move to sop it up, only nods his head and disappears into the crowd. 

It takes four months before Three shows up one morning and tells her the charade is over. Sharon is ready to hit her over the head—she's come too far to be boxed—when the blonde smiles. "Welcome back to God's love," she says and Sharon forces herself to smile back, watching those crafty blue eyes. "Thank you." They both are lying and they both know it. 

Caprica invites her to take coffee the next day and Sharon accepts, knowing it's an order not a suggestion. She doesn't care; it's all part of her plan. Boomer is there and she stares at Sharon openly for a long moment as the other model sits down. Sharon tries not to chuckle; her brain tells her why Boomer is staring, but she shoves it down as she swirls the milk into her cup. None of them speak for a moment and then Caprica smiles. Sharon knows what they want and she smiles back as she tells them the last known fleet coordinates. 

They keep close tabs on her, but when they land on New Caprica, Sharon finds it easy to slip away from the group. The air is cold and damp in her lungs, but she inhales it deeply, embracing the feeling. Mud oozes up over her boots, but she doesn't notice as she moves forward, her brain whirring with information and ideas. The wire on the heavy Raider snaps easily and she walks away without a backwards glance. Sharon doesn't believe in the glory of peace any more than she believes in God.

* * *

**Boredom**  
Racetrack thinks she was wrong to find running was boring; peace is the most boring thing of all. The thrill of the hunt is gone and long, idle days stretch endlessly before her, daunting in their emptiness.

She volunteers the first week of settlement to fly the twice weekly raptor shuttle runs. Twice a week turns into once every two weeks after four months time, but it's still better than endless games of triad in the rec room with the same old deck of cards. She knows the backs as well as the faces by now and there's no fun left to the game yet they all continue to play anyway.

Her life seems to be an endless repetition of futile movements. Early up to shower in recycled water that barely reaches tepid after a few months time—they all know the ship is falling apart around them without the regular repair she's used to—then it's a bland breakfast and long endless hours in the rec room until lunch and after lunch until dinner. After dinner some of the pilots take up drinking, but most just continue at their pointless games of cards. Lather rinse repeat. Lather rinse repeat.

Sometimes her passengers are interesting. She's been trained to not ask questions, so Racetrack makes up stories in her head about the people she ferries to and fro, scribbling them into a battered notebook late at night. Only one page isn't filled with line after line of curling black print; it says "Starbuck and Apollo?" at the top. She wonders what happened between them the day she was assigned to shuttle between Galactica and Pegasus. Nothing she speculates, though, seems fantastic enough to even be the fake truth, so the page remains blank.

Month seven seems to drag. None of the pilots want to play triad anymore, but they do anyway. They're all sick of working out, sick of fracking each other, sick of living only for the next boring CAP or shuttle run. Racetrack toys with the idea of leaving Galactica, but the idea of being alone terrifies her more than her endlessly boring days as a pilot. She wonders if that is what's keeping the others or if it's some sense of loyalty to the old ship. As fond as she is of the old girl, if she knew she would be happy planetside, she'd leave in a heartbeat, but Racetrack has seen those cold, damp, muddy conditions and the tepid recycled water and climate-controlled bunks are a luxury compared to that.

She's betting her last piece of hard candy in a game she knows she's already lost when Sweetness bursts into the rec room at a run. He's babbling about how she's dead oh gods she's dead and everyone pauses to stare at him. Racetrack feels her stomach tighten and a thrill of excitement goes through her before she realizes he's talking about Kat's Viper malfunctioning. Kat's dead, she tells herself, and you were excited about cylons. She looks down at her bad hand of cards guiltily, as if the other pilots have read her thoughts. 

They hold an impromptu wake after the somber military funeral. For the first time in nine long months they have something to celebrate and Racetrack thinks it's sick even as she downs a shot of ambrosia. Hot Dog has been sitting at a corner table in the rec room since the funeral, his battered magazine in his hands though he never turns a page. Racetrack takes it from him gently, setting it on the table. 

"She was a good pilot," she tells him quietly, pressing a drink into his cold hands. "And a good person."

Hot Dog looks up at her like he's seeing her for the first time. He nods and takes the glass, downing it in one gulp. He blinks hard and Racetrack wonders if the tears are from the booze or Kat. 

The mood among the pilots is never quite the same after that night. There's too much time to think, too many what-ifs or could-have-beens or what-if-that-was-me. They live with a quiet desperation, and, although it isn't an uncommon feeling, Racetrack feels more damned now than she ever did even in the heat of battle, destined to a life of boredom that is beginning to border on insanity. She stops playing cards and scrounges herself another two notebooks from abandoned lockers on the flight deck, filling the pages with the jumble of words that rattle around her skull. 

When the Old Man culls their numbers in month eleven, it's Racetrack who escorts the pilots away from Galactica for one final time. She waves goodbyes and laughs at their stupid jokes and wishes them well, but she doesn't feel any of it. On her return, she makes a list of each comrade in her notebook and writes them a happy ending. 

There's too few pilots left for a proper game of triad and Racetrack lets Bones convince her to deal in. He spots her two cigarettes and a tube of chapstick and she bets in with a sigh. Her heart isn't into the game and she lets the idle chatter flow over her as she stares off into space. It's her turn when the claxons begin to sound; the assembled pilots all pause, holding their breath as they stare at each other, hope and fear etched into their shocked expressions. Action stations rings over the com and chairs are shoved back so hastily they topple unnoticed to the floor. Racetrack flings her cards onto the table as she runs out of the room: full colours.

* * *

**Aid**  
The hatch swings open and a pilot shuffles into sickbay, smiling at Ishay sheepishly, a towel wrapped around his hand. She still sighs mentally, but part of her is excited that there's someone here for her to treat; something for her to do. She peels the towel away from his hand, looking at the gash in his finger. The pilot has some lame excuse about cutting it on his Viper, but Layne suspects from the bruise beginning to bloom under his left eye and the way he keeps looking back at the hatch that the specialists and pilots are playing pick-up pyramid in the hanger deck again. 

His wound isn't deep enough for stitches, so she just goops on some ointment and wraps a plastic band-aid around his finger. He asks if he could have the latex kind instead, that plastic bunches funny in his gloves and Layne sighs out loud this time and sends him out of sickbay. They haven't had latex band-aids in almost a year and now they've finally run out of the old cloth kind that always left a sticky residue on the skin. We're that residue, she thinks to herself as she sits back down at her desk and picks her book back up, just sitting here waiting for someone to scrape us off. The back cover falls off into her hands and she shakes her head. There was a reason she'd never wanted to be a doctor.

* * *

**Nostalgia**  
In a sea of dark knits and heavy jackets, the yellow mechanics jumpsuit sticks out like a sore thumb. Jammer doesn't care; people can stare and mock him all they like. He claims that it keeps him warm and dry, which is true, but really he can't bear to part with it. Getting rid of the jumpsuit is like throwing away part of his life and he isn't finished with it yet.

He thinks that New Caprica was supposed to be a paradise, a modern utopia of salvation or some flowery thing like that. He might not use fancy words, but he knows crap when he sees it. New Caprica is crap. If she were a Viper, he'd put her out of her misery without a second thought. 

The nice thing about the jumpsuit is that it was made for the grit and grime of the flight deck; nothing else in the colonies hoses down as well as a jumpsuit and nothing else keeps out the muck better. The Chief—or, Jammer supposes, Tyrol, although he can't bring himself to call the man that and certainly not Galen—says that Jammer's a walking bull's-eye, but who is around to shoot him anyway? He just grins and shrugs and the Chief shakes his head. 

He passes familiar faces, but it's like looking in a funhouse mirror; they've been distorted and changed by life away from the Galactica. He makes sure his jumpsuit is zipped up tight around his neck when he sees Starbuck for the first time in eight months and hopes he doesn't end up looking as desperate and changed as she does. Mud oozes over the toe of his military issue boots and he thinks that life here must be like that; it oozes and creeps up on you and smoothers you before you know what happened. The jumpsuit gets an extra special scrub down that night.

He's at work, welding together a frame for a new tent pavilion, when he hears the scream of Raiders. Around him the civvies keep working, but he drops his torch and slams back his visor, looking up to see the dark crescent soar across the sky. A thrill shoots through him and the familiar taste of fear crawls up his throat at the same time. His stomach is tight and it's the best feeling in the world. The welding visor falls to the ground as he makes a run for it to find the Chief, a splash of yellow against the dark ground.

* * *

**Stagnant**  
The model ship has been sitting, half put together for months now. Now that the fleet has settled on New Caprica, he has all the time in world, but the boat still sits, half-finished, half-remembered in a drawer, waiting.

Bill Adama has nine model ships in his quarters. He started the first the same day they announced the retirement of the Galactica, channeling his anger into the finely crafted wood and the potent glue. He's assembled eight boats, one for each month of their long journey. Nine in all, they sit atop the cabinets of his office, silent reminders of long days and sleepless nights, of lives lost and battles won. The tenth remains unfinished, cut short by the elections.

Some nights, as he sits alone at his desk and the weight of humanity settles heavy over his shoulders, he wishes he was the kind of man who could have let the election slide. He was—is already living the biggest lie: Earth. What harm would one more lie do? But the lie of hope and the lie of control are two terribly different things and Bill Adama will not see the fall of democracy. He's already been down that path and the end only brought him back to the same start.

The days on Galactica go by quickly at first. He lets anyone go who wants to leave; they're all tired, exhausted of living from day to day. He watches them leave, sees them to their Raptor shuttles, salutes them for one last time. The ranks thin out, but enough remain and their little family remains strong.

Two months into the settlement and the official decree comes: necessary personnel are the only to remain aboard ship. Adama ignores the order for two weeks before Baltar calls him up. The conversation is short and terse; Bill wants his men and women, Baltar wants power. 

He follows the order in the end; the will of the people is nothing if no one follows it and Bill is counting the days until the next election. He sees his children off, smiles at their reluctance, let's them horse around a moment longer before the last salutes and the doors to the shuttles close.

Kara still runs each morning, but he can see her heart isn't in it. He's known for weeks she's going to ask to go before she stops one morning, mid-step, and blurts it out. The both know she doesn't hear the rain anymore. 

The four month mark passes and the tenth ship is still untouched. Saul remarks on it one day and Bill shrugs and changes the topic. He has no heart for it anymore. 

The com rings late one night and it's Kara. Her voice is slurred but her tone is cheerful as she tells him she and Sam have gotten married. Bill smiles, shaking his head, and wishes her well. He wonders if she's told Lee.

Lee calls the next afternoon to angrily demand if his father had been warned about the wedding. 

Month five is when the lights start to flicker in the C corridors. Tyrol is gone to New Caprica, Cally with him, and his replacement, a weedy man from Pegasus, hasn't half the ingenuity and none of the loyalty. Galactica's old, he tells Adama who shakes his head and tells the man to get it fixed. He opens his mouth to protest and Bill silences him with a glare. Galactica may be old, but he'll see by her to the end. 

As their ranks grow thinner and thinner, promotions become commonplace. Helo replaces Gaeta, long gone to New Caprica in the fallout of the election. Dee transfers to Pegasus to take the place of Lee's previous XO. In a mere protocol medical test, Ishay replaces Cottle as ship doctor. Against his better judgement, Bill promotes Kat to CAG; the girl is tenacious but she has none of the charisma of Starbuck to temper it with. Late at night he tallies up his ragtag numbers, but they always come up short. He hopes that whatever powers are out there keep New Caprica safe. He has barely the numbers to run a CAP let alone defend a planet.

Some days he feels that if Baltar showed his greasy face on the CIC, he could happily snap the weasel's neck without a second thought. It's not just anger he feels towards the new president, but a slow, simmering rage that only grows each day as Galactica slowly decays and her people with it. 

Kat dies around the ninth month mark. Her old Mark II, long bereft of Tyrol's competent and loving hands, blows an engine on CAP and Kat spirals out of control. They all hear her cursing as she tries to regain control, to make it back. Then the other engine blows and the rest of the Viper with it. The com goes to static then silent and Bill removes his glasses slowly, rubs the bridge of his nose and shakes his head. 

He and Lee haven't spoken informally in months. He's worried about his son; various reports from other Pegasus crewmembers only add to the feeling of foreboding. He's never been good at talking with his son, though the gods' know he tries. Lee shuts him out before he can even start a conversation now. Bill wonders if his son is still hung up on Kara or if there's something else that's causing this downward spiral. 

The sight of Galactica falling apart sickens him. He decides one day in the eleventh month that he is going to let go of the last few remaining crewmembers who have stubbornly remained. They deserve better than this old rotting lighthouse. He starts with the pilots and then the deck crew and ends with Saul. 

He picks up a cigarette for the first time in ten years, removes the filter, and lights up. Alone now, he and Galactica will rot together in their stagnant peace, destined to become little more than space debris.

He's in the CIC, signing off on the few remaining pieces of paperwork that he still requires to be completed and listening to Helo talk about old pyramid games with half an ear when the call comes from the Pegasus: the cylons have found them. His heart feels as if it pauses a beat before starting back up sluggishly. He's been silently waiting for this day, wondering each morning if today will be the day he has to leave humanity to fend alone. It only serves to fuel his loathing for Baltar, the weak and egotistical fool. There's despair in his tone as he orders the jump away, leaving behind his people.

That night he takes out the tenth boat, opens his jar of lacquer, and begins to paint.

* * *

**Virtue**  
Patience, she knows, is a virtue, and she cultivates it like a crop, smiling and waiting and watching, infinitely patient as God is infinitely loving. 

He thinks he's gotten rid of her, that he's triumphed over his own mind, but she knows better and it makes her smile. If only he knew, he would tremble before her. She plays with that thought, rolling around and taking delight in it as she watches him ruin the human race. This is all part of God's plan. He just doesn't know it. He never knows what he is doing, the fool, but that's what she likes about him.

She watches him start at every little sound, drown himself in booze and pills and other women, and all she can do is smile. Poor little man and his fragile ego. She watches humanity flounder in the mud, struggling to eek by while their leader remains frozen and afraid, hiding away in his office and indulging his whims. He's such a bad boy, this instrument of God. 

His delusions make her laugh; she's never left him. She is beside him at his every move, a huge but silent influence to his every action. She is the president, she is the mindless indulgences; he just doesn't know it. She lets him live in his illusions a while longer, lets all of humanity, until it will cease to be part of God's plan.

She knows the moment the cylons arrive, as she sits in his chair, watching him silently indulge himself in the same bored manner as he does every day. Her eyes light up and she knows now that her wait has not been in vain. She smiles and crosses one leg over the other, placing the heel of her shoe firmly into the low pile carpet. The chair turns easily and she caresses the arms of the leather gently as he turns and looks at her. It's time to pay for his sins with God's love; it's time for all of humanity to pay. She smirks, delighted with the thought.

"Judgment day." 

 

_This is the way the world ends_  
This is the way the world ends  
This is the way the world ends  
Not with a bang but a whimper.  



End file.
